Getting Out While the Getting is Good

There are times when fate seems to conspire to ‘protect’ you.

You aren’t there when disaster hits, you aren’t a witness to other people’s grief.   You weren’t working for the company when there was an inquiry.   People you had been close to or wanted to be, turn out not to be who you thought they were while you are a distance away.   Jobs you had wanted but didn’t get are deleted, leaving whomever ‘beat’ you out of the position unemployed.

Then there are times when you make a decision, and because you take all facts into consideration, you make the right choice.

Sometimes you really are lucky.

Everything collapses, you are left on your own, and instead of wallowing in misery, you take it as a second chance.  You don’t look back, you look forward, and you proceed.

Sure, what is left behind could break your heart if you let it, but if you accept that it is over, and move on, it can’t hurt you.

Too many people cling to the past, let things that happened/didn’t happen fill their minds.

I recall a man who was thirty seven years old.   He seemed morose and I began to speak with him, assuming some terrible recent tragedy.   He began to speak, then came to his denouement;  he never had a birthday party when he was eight years old.

I sat there, stunned, unbelieving that this man would waste one brain cell on something like this.

I left the conversation so happy  I had very little connection to this person. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone like this in my life.

Then I thought how many people like him are NOT in my life.

I don’t want miserable people like this making me unhappy.   I don’t need to hear these kinds of ‘tragedies’.

I have been lucky in life.   People who would bring me down, places that would dampen my spirit are often discarded, almost without thinking and without remorse.

A person of 37 who would moan about not having an 8 year old birthday party is the kind of person I want to keep 1000 miles between us.   If he can complain about that I’m sure he’s the kind to do ten minutes of whining on a cap left off a tooth paste, on the smell of cigarettes in a public bathroom.

The most important thing is to be happy.   To make yourself happy, regardless of the circumstance.  Not to find things to bring your spirit down to the sewer.